His argumentation misses an important variable: The programmers time involved. Fix this, and fix the machine, and programming languages do have speed. And cert

His argumentation misses an important variable: The programmers time involved. Fix this, and fix the machine, and programming languages do have speed. And certainly, the statement 'This problem solution in language X developed in Time T running on machine M is faster than the problem solution developed in language Y developed in time T, running on machine M' (often condensed into 'X is faster than Y' is certainly possible and valid, given that the programmers developing the program are about even in skill. (I don't want to assume the same programmer here. Language benchmarks have been shot because someone wrote a good C-Program and a horrible Python program and complained how slow the python program is).